On August 27, 2014, India’s .IN Registry launched its first native-language ccTLD, .भारत (.Bharat) in the national capital, New Delhi. The ccTLD is the word for “India” written in the Devanagari script, and is the matching Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) ccTLD for .IN. TLD Registry is ecstatic that this new IDN TLD is now part of the IDN community.

.IN registry NIXI CEO Dr. Govind kindly invited TLD Registry to the launch party where the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, and Minister for Law and Justice, Shri. Ravi Shankar Prasad presented to the world the new Hindi IDN. Our own CMO Simon Cousins and CEO Arto Iskoski were fortunate enough to become acquainted with Dr. Govind, CEO of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), during the events at World Domain Day 2014 in Hyderabad, India a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, due to previous travel engagements in China and India, TLD Registry was not able to participate in the function. We are sorry we missed such a wonderful opportunity to witness this milestone.

NIXI, like TLD Registry, has been advocating a multilingual Internet community of universal access. In coordination with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), NIXI will be launching more IDNs in other regional languages.

This is truly a tremendous step towards achieving universal accessibility in numerous respects.

The release of this domain name in Devanagari script means that it will support the languages of Bodo (Boro), Dogri, Hindi, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, and Sindhi-Devanagari. Hindi alone, is the national language of India, with the second largest population in the world (following China), making it the fourth most spoken language in the world.

This is a pretty big deal - nearly 20% of the world just gained the satisfaction of being included into the world of the Internet.

Devanagari using communities are now empowered to use their native written language on the Internet, enabling them to foster a deeper understanding about other Indian people and their culture.

.भारत has not only transformed the lives of the Devanagari speaking people, but has also unified the digital world with India. Before the introduction of IDNs, non-English speakers felt a lack of relevance in the digital world. But now, the feeling has transferred more closely to a lack of a digital divide. TLD Registry is celebrating that current feeling with India and its people.

Congratulations .भारत and welcome!

Amanda Ng, TLD Registry

This post is also available in: Chinese (Simplified)